FOR even like those drooping flowers
Fast hastening to the silent tomb,
A few short days - a few short hours-
And all things lose their transient bloom;
The friends who read this strain, and I,
Must follow, like a passing sigh.

ANNA PEYRE DINNIES

HATH not God strown our weary way with flowers;
And clothed, with robes of many a hue,
The fragrant meadows, and the woodland bowers,
Feeding their beauty with his dew,

Making them glad, with sunshine and with showers?
Is it not written that He knew

Himself a joy divine,

Amidst young Eden's holy trees, when, walking
There, His children sought His love?

And the pure spirit still may hear Him talking
Such words as drew rapt Enoch's soul above.
So ask Him to draw thine:

Seek Him, for He is near thee;

Sing to Him, He will hear thee. BETHUNE

YE are the scriptures of the earth,

Sweet flowers fair and frail; A sermon speaks in every bud That woos the Summer gale.

THERE is a lesson in each flower,
A story in each stream and bower;
On every herb on which you tread
Are written words, which, rightly read,
Will lead you from earth's fragrant sod,
To hope, and holiness, and God.

ANONYMOUS

ALLAN CUNNINGHAM.

POSTHUMOUS. glories! Angel-like collection!
Upraised from seed or bulb interred in earth,
Ye are to me a type of resurrection,

A second birth.

Were I, O God, in churchless lands remaining,
Far from the voice of teachers or divines,
My soul would find, in flowers of thy ordaining,
Priests, sermons, shrines!

HORACE SMITH,

THE sickliest leaf,

The feeblest efflorescence of the moss,
That drinks thy dew reproves our unbelief.
The frail field-lily, which no florist's eye
Regards, doth win a garniture from thee
To kings denied. So while to dust we bow,
Needy and poor, O bid us learn the lore
Graved on the lily's leaf, as fair and clear
As on yon disk of fire-to trust in Thee.

MRS. SIGOURNEY.

FRAILTY.

For the good that I would I do not, but the evil which I would not, that I do. Re MANS, vii, 19.

Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth, take heed lest he fall. I. CORINTHIANS X, 12t

All have sinned, and come short of the glory of God. ROMANS, iii, 23.

ADAM'S foul revolt

From the primeval law, on all his sons,

Through every age, the sad inheritance
Of sin and death entailed.

SAMUEL HAYES.

ALAS!

the evil that we fain would shun

We do, and leave the wished-for good undone :
Our strength to-day

Is but to-morrow's weakness, prone to fall;
Poor, blind, unprofitable servants, all,

Are we alway.

J. G. WHITTIER.

BUT man with frailty is allied by birth.

BP. LOWTH,

How weak is man! how frail his best resolves!
But frailest those which owe their hasty birth
To fear; how short, how transient is their life.
Hardly obtained, they shine but as the sparks
Struck from the flint, which scarce outlive the blow.
CHARLES JENNER.

Poor race of men! said the pitying Spirit,

Dearly ye pay for your primal Fall

Some flowerets of Eden ye still inherit,

But the trail of the serpent is over them all!

THOMAS MOORE.

FEW bring back at eve,

Immaculate, the manners of the morn.

Something we thought is blotted; we resolved,

Is shaken; we renounced, returns again.

By nature peccable and frail are we,
Easily beguiled; to vice, to error prone;
But apt for virtue too. Humanity

Is not a field where tares and thorns alone

YOUNG.

Are left to spring; good seed hath there been sown
With no unsparing hand. Sometimes the shoot.

Is choked with weeds, or withers on a stone;
But in a kindly soil it strikes its root,

And flourisheth, and bringeth forth abundant fruit.

(See also GUILT, SIN, THE FALL.)

SOUTHEY.

FREEDOM-FREE WILL.

WHERE the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. II. CORINTHIANS, iii, 17.

So speak ye, and so do, as they that shall be judged by the law of liberty. JAMES ii, 12.

For so is the will of God, that with well-doing ye may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men:

As free, and not using your liberty as a cloak of maliciousness, but as the servants of God. I. PETER, ii, 15, 16. -

And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. f the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.

JOHN, viii, 32.
JOHN, viii, 36.

TRUE Liberty was Christian; sanctified,
Baptized and found in Christian hearts alone.
First-born of Virtue, daughter of the skies,
Nursling of truth divine; sister of all
The graces, meekness, holiness, and love:
Giving to God, and man, and all below

That symptom showed of sensible existence,
Their due, unasked.

POLLOK.

THOUGHTS uncontrolled and unimpressed, the births

Of pure election, arbitrary range,

Not to the limits of one world confined.

RELIGION, richest favour of the skies,

YOUNG.

Stands most revealed before the freeman's eyes.
No shades of superstition blot the day,
Liberty chases all that gloom away;
The soul, emancipated, unoppressed,

Free to prove all things, and hold fast the best,
Learns much, and to a thousand listening minds
Communicates with joy the good she finds.

COWPER.

MAN (ingenious to contrive his woe,
And rob himself of all that makes this vale
Of tears bloom comfort) cries, If God foresees
Our future actings, then the objects known
Must be determined, or the knowledge fail:
Thus liberty's destroyed, and all we do
Or suffer, by a fatal thread is spun.
Say, fool, with too much subtilty misled,
Who reasonest but to err, does Prescience change
The property of things? Is aught thou seest
Caused by thy vision, not thy vision caused
By forms that previously exist? To God
This mode of seeing future deeds extends,
And freedom with foreknowledge may exist.

GEORGE BALLY

PLACED for his trial on this bustling stage,
From thoughtless youth to ruminating age,
Free in his will to choose or to refuse,
Man may improve the crisis, or abuse;
Else, on the fatalist's unrighteous plan,
Say to what bar amenable were man?

With naught in charge, he could betray no trust;
And if he fell, would fall because he must;
If Love reward him, or if Vengeance strike,
His recompense in both unjust alike.

COWPER

GRACE leads the right way: if you choose the wrong,
Take it and perish, but restrain your tongue;
Charge not, with light sufficient, and left free,

Your wilful suicide on God's decree.

COWPER.

YET gave me in this dark estate

To see the good from ill,

And, binding Nature fast in fate,

Left free the human will.

POPE